


Organ Noise

by magicforestboy



Series: Fruit of the Spirit [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Has No Chill, M/M, POV Adam Parrish, Pining, Ronan Lynch Has Feelings, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish's Hands, Sleepy Flirting, so very much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicforestboy/pseuds/magicforestboy
Summary: More and more often, Ronan has been sleeping on the floor in Adam's little apartment. And as annoying as that can be, tonight the lack of Ronan's breathing and shuffling around is even more infuriating.So that's how Adam comes to be sitting in a church pew, thinking about a dreamer and unable to dream himself.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: Fruit of the Spirit [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696036
Comments: 37
Kudos: 234





	Organ Noise

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! Hope you're staying safe and well wherever you are and that you enjoy the fic, which takes place somewhere in the ether between The Dream Thieves and Blue Lily, Lily Blue.  
> Would love any and all feedback and shout it out if you spot the little parallel to a Call Down The Hawk scene (there aren't any spoilers though, if there are some who still haven't read it!)  
> Thanks for reading!:)

Adam Parrish rarely ventures into the lower part of his accommodations. He feels the vibrations of the organ music, sometimes, and when he does he muses about the existence of a god for a moment or two. If there is magic and ghosts and psychic abilities and dreamers with dreams made tangible there was no telling what else was out there. Uncertainty is unsettling to Adam, however. It sits crooked on his shoulders like a too small t-shirt. So mostly he lets the wonderings go. He may have been able to tune out the questions completely for the rest of his life had it not been for one (1) unlikely church goer Ronan Niall Lynch taking up residence in his life.

More often than not these days, this chaotic entity called Ronan also takes up residence on his floor boards. Not tonight. And for whatever reason tonight this lack feels particularly itchy and wrong. That is to say, Adam Parrish just can’t fall asleep. Which. Is near unheard of. While his best friends have sleep dilemmas to spare, Adam Parrish (besides being named most likely to get out of this god forsaken town and into a faraway ivy college by the skin of his teeth) could be written up in a yearbook as Most Likely to Nap Literally Anywhere & Everywhere (with two dozen photos as proof, probably. Thanks for that, Tad). 

Not tonight. Tonight the lack of Ronan's breathing and shuffling around is... annoying. So that's how he comes to be sitting in a church pew, thinking about a dreamer and unable to dream himself.

He’s unsure how long it’s been (minutes? hours? entire rotations of the earth?) when this odd liminal peace is broken, and he startles as a voice crackles behind him. "Parrish?" 

Unless? Maybe he _is_ dreaming. It’d be just like his life to proffer him a dream saturated in just as much longing as his regular day to day.

"Jesus Mary Joseph shitting _Christ,"_ says the voice. And, okay. That’s definitely in-the-flesh Ronan. Adam turns his head to see the other boy scraping his nails over his scalp, mouth pursed sharp. 

"What are you doing here?" is all Adam can think to say. 

"What am I doing here, the fuck are _you_ doing here? I was knocking at your door for- fuck you, Parrish. Trying to kill me with a heart attack sitting in the pews in the dark-"

"I couldn't sleep," Adam interjects, feeling as though he should stop Ronan there before the tirade spirals into endlessness. 

"And so you came...down here." As if it was unbelievable, inconceivable, to see Adam in this place, in Ronan’s most sacred space. As if it was some insurmountable incongruence.

In the soft glow of moon lit stained glass, Adam watches Ronan's mouth work itself into a frown. 

Adam nods seriously, eyes still on Ronan's lips. Inviting, pillowy soft lips. He feels delirious with sleepiness. "Thought God could sing me a lullaby," he offers at last. 

Ronan huffs and it's not quite a laugh, but he sits beside Adam so that's a win at least. He's sitting far enough away that their arms don't touch but his body heat is a comforting presence. Adam wants to move closer. Adam, like always, _wants_. Wants to fall asleep engulfed in the embrace of someone else's warm muscle and bone and skin. Even if that person is mostly beak and claw. Perhaps especially so. In the silent ellipsis between them, Adam tunes into that missing music of before also known as the cadence of Ronan's breathing. He allows his body the soft relief of matching the rhythm. He kind of hates how much he wanted just that. How his limbs and brain had obviously been waiting for it in order to...He's not sure. Feel safe? Feel un-alone? Feel...part of something?

The glow is loosening Adam's tongue. Or maybe it's just that... this a church and this is where confessions happen on the regular, right? Why not speed the process?

"What would you have done?" He says, tugging at a loose string of sweat pant. 

Ronan grunts. "If what."

Adam pauses and then offers, "If you hadn't found me here."

"Asked God for a lullaby, obviously. Heard that's the way to go." 

It's a non-answer. Adam's not sure what kind of real answer he's seeking. His heart thumps. He supposes in his stupor of exhaustion that it'd just be nice. You know? To hear aloud, explicitly, that he is cared for. That he is someone worthy of worry, in the good way. That he is missed when he is missing. Not just by anyone, either. But by this prickly tender-hearted boy. 

"Hm," is all he says. "Got great songs, doesn't he."

"Parrish, you're..." Ronan sighs again. "You're practically a zombie. It's way fucking past your bedtime."

Adam's eyelids are in fact unable to stay open any longer. He slumps now to the side, and finds himself colliding with solid bicep and shoulder. He mumbles, "What does that make you, then? Zombie...wrangler."

This time Ronan does laugh, and it feels just like how stepping foot into Cabeswater does. He feels the vibrations of it. Just like he feels the church organ vibrations, except this time it’s lung organ and heart organ and all these little instruments his apartment has been so hollow without.

Without thinking, driven by some instinct or other, Adam turns his head, pressing his face into Ronan's neck. He feels the skin go sharp with pink heat and relishes in the reaction. Wants to lick the parking lot of throat. Instead he murmurs, "Like your laugh."

Ronan breathes out in a tiny whoosh of air and Adam thinks he's figured it out. Ronan is the lullaby. God's lullaby, that is. All the symphony of sounds and textures and temperatures and _yes_ , that must be it. 

"If this is you without sleep, God forbid you ever get drunk," Ronan mutters. Adam feels the other boy’s head tilt. " _Are_ you drunk?" 

"Noooo," Adam whines. He's stuck in this awful state of wanting to fold himself into Ronan's side like one of Blue's origami birds while also wanting deeply to see his face. Who designed humans this faulty way that he couldn't manage both at once? "Had no breath."

"You couldn't breathe? The fuck, why didn't you mention that before?" Ronan starts to pull away and Adam whines more furiously, burrowing his face once more into Ronan's warm neck, swatting one hand against Ronan's stomach and then (why not?) just leaving his hand there. 

"Stop wriggling, menace," Adam whispers. "Not I had no breath. _You_ had no breath."

Adam can practically hear the furrow of Ronan's eyebrows, the crinkling of his forehead. "You…had a nightmare?"

"Real life nightmare," Adam huffs. "No one sleepin on m'floor."

Adam realizes, way too damn late, that he's been moving his hand on Ronan's stomach, tracing massaging circles. All the breath music has gone ragged and off kilter and he knows that _he_ did that.

He stills his hand. A flood of new wave uncertainty crashes against him and it's near enough to shake him into a more lucid state. Maybe there is no reciprocated want or care or worry or missing. And hell, he surely can't start hitching his ability to sleep on some external source- he'll run himself into the dirt from whence he came, etcetera, before week's end and-

" _Fuck_." The curse is so quiet Adam almost doesn't catch it. His stomach swoops in response immediately.

He thinks that while there are many kinds of control he never ever wants to exert on another human being, this is one he could crave for the rest of his life. The knowledge, however unlikely it seemed, that Ronan Lynch was reacting to his proximity was a heady feeling, lighting up his insides with lightning fire.

Despite the steadiness of this sensation and knowing he wants it to continue, the swirling lack of sleep provides little help in terms of strategy. Out of rhythm with his thoughts, Adam’s hand slowly moves off Ronan’s stomach and up to the other boy’s neck. He wonders if this is the most still, the most quiet that Ronan has ever been, or if that’s par the course in this church. Either way, it feels right somehow. Either way, it makes Adam want to pray himself. Something like _lord, give me the strength to remember every detail of this in the morning_. Or _the strength to do something rash enough there’s no way I could forget even if I tried_.

It hardly lasts a moment, though, fingers on bare skin, before Ronan shakes him off. His voice is ragged and rough, like he’s just woken up from his own sleep, as he says, “Time to go.”

Blessedly, Ronan had only moved so that he could offer up his back to Adam. “A piggy back? What m’I, six?” But he winds his arms around Ronan’s neck before there can be any rescinding of the gift.

They move slowly up the old wooden steps to the apartment and Adam is highly alert to the points of contact between them. He winds his arms around Ronan’s neck tighter and feels him readjust his grip on his legs as if in reply.

It's possible that _this_ is the explicit confession, now that Adam considers it. Maybe that's how Ronan always does his confession. Perhaps all his conversations with gods and saints are not with his words but with his actions. With the whole arch of his body.

Adam can’t help but be reminded of the beginning, when he was first introduced to Ronan, all contradictions: frightening and afraid, slicing and soft, apathetic and intensely filled with care for those he loved. Adam buries his face once more into Ronan’s neck, closing his eyes and flinging up one last tiny, unexplainable, desperate prayer to whatever God or gods existed:

 _Please_. 

"Ronan," Adam whispers. But the door is unlatching and he is being gently set down onto the floor, hands sliding away. Not what he asked for at all.

When Ronan meets his eyes, bright even in mostly darkness, Adam swallows down all his nerve. 

"It’s sleep o’clock, idiot," Ronan says, leaning against the wall when Adam doesn't continue.

"M'kinda hungry," he blurts. He doesn't know why. Because it _is_ time to sleep, like, _yesterday_ , and his limbs feel fluid. But he doesn't want to exit this pocket of space where Ronan is willing to allow him the privilege of touch. 

"Course you are," Ronan grumbles but he's already halfway to the tiny fridge. "Gotta do everything around here, don't I?" 

"Berries," Adam supplies, sitting on the floor against his mattress. "Please."

Somehow this doesn’t feel like charity, this late night delirium of asking Ronan to do something for him, to take _care_ of him, not like it might usually. It feels like something mutually electric. Like both of them are weaving something entirely new.

The fridge door shuts softly and when Adam opens his eyes, a small cup of raspberries is being slotted into his hand. He hums his thanks and pops a couple into his mouth as Ronan lowers himself to the floor as well.

Ronan's eyes are on him now, he knows. It’s been like this for a while, and he’s never been sure how to respond as the object of such devoted attention. Never been sure how to let Ronan know - without spoken admission - that he knows he is being watched. Not only that he knows but that he knows and he _likes_ it.

As slow as he can manage, he licks his bottom lip. He's rewarded with another gorgeous intake of breath.

At this stage he is acting on pure whim and whim is saying _fingers_. Doesn't he sometimes catch Ronan gazing at his hands? Even when streaked with splotches of grease? _Yes_. So Adam says, "Want one?" 

He scoops a raspberry out of the pile clumsily and then after a moment of hesitation, raises the fruit to Ronan's lips.

"I think you're losing it, Parrish," Ronan says but the venom of it has vanished. Instead it's airy and unsure and hopelessly hot. 

"Your fault," Adam whispers, and with their eyes locked, Adam watches carefully as Ronan parts his lips. Just as carefully, Adam places the small red fruit on Ronan's tongue, and allows his two fingers to linger. Ronan closes his mouth over them, eyelids dropping, tongue coming to brush over fingers and it's Adam's turn to lose all oxygen. Because. Wow.

It’s soft but Ronan is definitely sucking on his fingers and it’s, god, it’s obscene and Adam knows suddenly, scientifically, what is meant by butterflies in the stomach, and then he’s pulling off and away.

Ronan blinks his eyes open, almost looking surprised, like he can't believe it. (What? That it happened at all? That he pulled away?) Adam isn’t sure either, and he looks down, face firework flaming, rummaging around in the cup for another berry.

His eye keeps catching on his own thumb and index fingers, mind catching on the sensory memory of moments ago, being in a mouth so very not his own. 

Outside, he can hear it start to rain. It clangs notes of melody on the roof. Ronan’s breathing is fast in harmony with it and he wants to bottle up all these sounds and senses together and replace every item in his cabinets with it.

He finally manages to unstick his thoughts from each other and unstick one berry from its neighbour and just as he’s managing to say, “another?” he hears Ronan breathe out, “I’m sorry. Fuck.”

“What?” Adam tilts his head to the side, meeting Ronan’s eyes, now wild and afraid and glancing away.

“I…you’re practically half unconscious…you’re half brain-dead, Parrish,” he’s babbling, and it’s another state of being that he is not used to seeing Ronan inhabit. “Why the fuck aren’t you just asleep? You had to be all…and now I’ve…Christ.”

There’s laughter in Adam’s mouth, but he doesn’t dare let it out, because he know it would sound hysterical and he probably wouldn’t stop. “I had to be all _what_?”

Ronan groans. “You’re not even aware right now. You…I should leave.” He’s getting up to his feet now, and Adam has to scramble up, stumbling over himself, to put a stop to _that_ nonsense. And then Ronan’s hands are on his hips to steady him and yes, that’s much better.

“Don’t go,” he whispers.

Ronan backs up a step. “I can’t fucking stay while you’re like this and not…”

“And not?” Adam lifts his chin in sleepy defiance. “What is it you want, darlin’?”

He’s not sure where the _darling_ came from but it certainly gets a reaction; Ronan’s pupils dilate and he watches, painfully, as his eyes flit down to Adam’s lips for the briefest of seconds before they’re hardened back into resolve.

“To leave before you do something you’ll regret forever,” it’s firm, and he watches breathless as Ronan pulls his jacket on and heads straight for the door.

He pauses there, his palm on the handle. He doesn’t look back when he says, “Now please for the love of all things holy get some _fucking_ rest or so help me, Adam.”

 _Adam_. Maybe if Ronan (in absence and presence equally) wasn’t so god damned _distracting_ he would have already been in bed hours ago!

“Goodnight,” Adam says, and it’s soft and hoarse and Ronan still doesn’t look back. Just opens the door and disappears on the other side of it and, presumably, off into the night.

Adam sighs a long sigh. Then, he turns off the light and crawls onto his mattress. He falls asleep eventually, fitfully, to the poor replacement music that is the rain, and fumbles into dreams about all the other ways Ronan might’ve finished his sentence.


End file.
